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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is taking his culture war into the academic arena by considering the withdrawal of tuition assistance for service members at numerous prestigious colleges and universities, which he perceives as having an anti-military bias.
This initiative has raised concerns in both military and academic circles, as it threatens to sever a crucial pathway for developing future military leaders.
“Hegseth’s approach is remarkably shortsighted on several fronts,” commented Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown law professor and former Pentagon adviser. “By limiting access to the nation’s top universities, Hegseth seems to underestimate the capability of our officers to critically engage with their coursework and distinguish between opinion and fact.”
The first hint of Hegseth’s plan emerged last week in a video statement. He revealed that the Pentagon would end its educational partnership with Harvard University starting in the 2026/2027 academic year, accusing the institution of being a “hub of anti-America activism.”
Hegseth, a former Fox News host, leveled a range of unsubstantiated allegations against Harvard, claiming that many of its faculty members harbor disdain for the military, portray the armed forces unfavorably, and suppress opposing political viewpoints.
“For too long, this department has sent our best and brightest officers to Harvard, hoping the university would better understand and appreciate our warrior class,” he said. “Instead, too many of our officers came back looking too much like Harvard, heads full of globalist and radical ideologies that do not improve our fighting ranks.”
In the video, Hegseth threatened to explore the same option at other Ivy League schools, following up with a memo signed last week that ordered the military branches to evaluate all existing graduate programs for active-duty members at the top-tier institutions and any other civilian universities “that similarly diminish critical thinking and have significant adversary involvement,” CNN first reported.
That effort is now underway, with the military branches beginning to compile lists of colleges and universities where service members could soon no longer be able to get tuition assistance from the Pentagon should they attend.
A preliminary list compiled by the Army, for example, includes 34 schools where troops might enroll in law school being marked at “moderate to high risk” of being banned, CNN reported.
Included in the list are schools attended by top Trump administration officials: President Trump routinely touts his degree from the University of Pennsylvania; Vice President Vance obtained his law degree from Yale University; Hegseth attended Princeton University and Harvard; Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg attended Princeton University; Army Secretary Dan Driscoll attended Yale Law School; and Navy Secretary John Phelan holds a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard.
The Pentagon, Army, Navy and Air Force did not respond to a request for comment from The Hill regarding Hegseth’s memo.
Since taking the helm of the Pentagon last year, Hegseth has focused on reshaping the military’s culture, enacting policy that has stretched from banning transgender troops and reviewing whether women should serve in combat roles, to reevaluating the Defense Department’s support for Scouting America unless it institutes “core value reforms.”
His moves around higher education take place amid broader tensions between the Trump administration and Harvard and other Ivy League schools he has deemed as too “woke,” which include ongoing disputes over federal funding; allegations of antisemitism on campus; and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
Harvard did not reply to multiple requests for comment from The Hill.
Hegseth, who served as a major in the Army National Guard, has echoed Trump’s criticisms, frequently attacking Harvard over the years, including in a 2022 on-air segment of “Fox & Friends” where he wrote “Return to sender” on his Harvard diploma.
“We train warriors, not wokesters,” he said in his video. “Harvard, good riddance.”
But national security experts worry the decision politicizes military education and could limit the exposure of future military leaders to different viewpoints.
Kori Schake, a senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute think tank, described Hegseth as an “amplifier of the president’s personal vendettas,” with his efforts meant to punish universities the White House dislikes. That “sends a message of anti-intellectualism that will affect who chooses to join or remain in military service,” she told The Hill.
Cutting military members’ access to classes at Harvard and other institutions also limits diversity of thought and critical thinking skills, according to Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor emeritus at the Naval War College who has taught through Harvard extension and summer schools for more than two decades.
“I had one student a few years ago, an active-duty intelligence officer, tell me at the end of a class on women, peace and security that he was angry — angry that he had previously taken all the classes offered by the military and nobody had ever mentioned the role of gender in assessing security environments and now that he recognized that role, he felt that he had been doing those he prepared assessments for an injustice,” Johnson-Freese offered as one example.
Scott Peoples, executive director of Veterans for Responsible Leadership, pointed out that providing federal funding for higher education for officers is a tool for recruitment and retention.
“When you do leave the military, you’re potentially leaving with this degree from a university like Harvard or MIT or Georgetown. If you’re taking that away as options that’s going to hurt for retention of officers and recruiting of new officers,” said Peoples, a former Army captain who became an officer through the ROTC program at the University of California, Los Angeles.
He also called curtailing options for higher education “a slap in the face to some of these officers” to insinuate they could become brainwashed simply by being exposed to left-leaning ideology.
“I think it undermines the quality of officers that we have in the military, to think that going to one of these universities is a, I don’t know, a danger to the military,” he said.
Lawmakers also have expressed concerns over Hegseth’s recent actions, with the House Armed Services Committee minority staff submitting a request for information on this issue to the Defense Department last week. They have yet to receive a response, a committee minority staffer told The Hill.
Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the panel’s ranking member, said in a statement to The Hill that he was “deeply troubled” by reports that the Pentagon is considering severing academic partnerships with other colleges and universities in addition to Harvard.
“If these reports are true, this stands as another glaring example of Secretary Hegseth’s attempts to erode apolitical norms as part of his ongoing rightwing culture war,” Smith said. “That is why we have asked the Department to provide a full accounting of the nature of any ongoing assessment of colleges and universities for receipt of Departmental funding, including for consideration of denial of tuition assistance.”
He urged his colleagues in the majority “to join us in ensuring the Department does not waste further time and resources on what appears to be a blatant political ploy that undermines our ability to build and retain the best military in the world and threatens serious national security risks.”